We were to set out on October 3rd, at around 5pm in the afternoon. The plan was for us to leave our dorm at about 4:30 and to take the 15 minute walk to the train station near campus. From there, we would take the subway to the Shanghai Train Station. Unfortunately and embarrassingly for me, I fell out of the shower on Sunday morning and injured myself rather badly. In my defense, the shower floors are very slippery and the shower shoes we were given are notoriously slick, especially when wet. Laying sprawled and soggy on the white tile of the bathroom floor, I decided to buy better shower shoes. Moments later, while trying to convince my feet to stay under me and coercing my aching left leg not to give out, I decided that we'd need to change our transportation plans.
(Read about How It Began.)
(I should, briefly, introduce you to Kyle and Riane.
Riane is from Texas. She would probably want me to make sure you knew that first and foremost. She is on the taller side of things and is skinny in a way that makes me constantly want to offer her something to eat. Her easy smile crinkles her eyes when she laughs, and she laughs often. She has curly brown hair that gleams copper when the light hits it in the right way and a button nose. I like Riane a lot. We are very, very different, but we get along really well. I think she's more than a little bit crazy, but I also think that she's very brave and I envy her ability to believe in ideas and people.
Kyle is from Colorado, thought that's less important than Riane's Texan upbringing. His personal motto is that he would always rather be fishing. Kyle is about half a head taller than I am, and harbors a deep and abiding love for gray shirts and jean shorts. Kyle is, generally speaking, unflappable and calm. His reserved personality contrasted rather humorously with Riane's and my overexcitable, slightly hysteric personalities. Before our trip, I thought he was detached and taciturn, but that's only tip of the Kyle iceberg. Kyle is funny, fun-loving and highly intelligent. He just has a much more tightly woven filter between his brain and his mouth than I have.)
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After my fall on Sunday morning, I had to convince Kyle and Riane to take a cab to the train station. I thought this would be a bigger issue than it turned out to be, because Kyle is notoriously thrifty. (He didn't at all mind about taking a cab, but he did judge me pretty hard about falling out of the shower.)
Getting from the cab to our departure gate was rather easy. The process was a lot like airport security, except far easier. Our bags were scanned by security, our tickets were checked and we were waved in the general direction of Waiting Area 5. There were 4 departure gates attached to Waiting Area 5 and seating areas for each of those departure gates. We three found a comfy patch of wall and floor and sat down to wait for our departure time.
Riane and I explored the train station for a bit before the train left. There were dozens of little snack shops along the sides of the main corridor off of which branched the waiting areas. As we had all gone to the local supermarkets to stock up on snacks and food before leaving, we didn't need much from these shops.
After waiting for about an hour, our train was called. When a train is called, everyone getting on that train rapidly forms a monstrous queue stemming from the gate for that train. Queueing in China is sort of like getting in line for lunch in middle school. There are ambiguous and ill-defined rules about where you're supposed to go and how you're supposed to act, but, as with all laws in China, these are more like guidelines than actual rules. Everyone tries to cut everyone else and when they're caught cutting, they deny furiously that it ever happened. Riane, Kyle and I were nearly jostled out of the queue more than once, prompting the following conversation:
Me: "Kyle! Queue harder!"
Kyle: "Short of punching someone, I am queuing as hard as I can! Jeez!"
We eventually made it onto our train and into our compartment by following the natural flow of traffic through the gate, onto the platform and onto the car. As I discussed in an earlier post, we bought tickets for a soft sleeper car. Riane and I were settled on the top bunks of compartment 20, while Kyle was all alone on the top bunk of compartment 21.
The compartments were perfectly comfortable. There were 4 beds, two on top and two below. We had a table, a window, a coffee pot and a garbage can, and each bed had a comforter and a pillow. Riane and I were bunked with a middle aged Chinese couple who were nice and helpful but reluctant to talk to me, even when I used my very best Chinese.
The most interesting part of our first evening on the train was trying to find the bathroom. Kyle alerted us, via text, that he had seen the bathroom as we boarded the train. After eating a nutritious dinner of chips and candy and clambering down from our bunks, Riane and I went to search it out. What we found was a room with a row of sinks (all full of soapy/dirty water), a bucket full of some mystery liquid (of indeterminable color and origin), a stool covered by a soggy towel and a dangerously wet floor. Assuming that this was not the lavatory, we frantically phoned Kyle for help. He came to our rescue and showed us the real bathroom.
The bathroom was exactly what I expected it to be: a squat toilet that sort of explodes whenever you flush it. The exploding flush seemed to serve two purposes: one - it sucks all the air out of the room and thus pulls everything out of the toilet and onto the tracks below, sort of like opening doors of a spaceship out into the void. Two - it sort of washes the floor with what can generously be called "questionable" water. Needless to say, almost everything in the bathroom was perpetually wet. To use the toilet, one had to hold very tightly to the bars screwed in over the oddly placed window with one hand while using the other to pull the crotch of one's pants away from the floor, the toilet and what was going in to the toilet.
As we stood outside the lavatory, talking and waiting for the room to be unoccupied, a little chinese boy wandered past. Catching sight of us, he said, "啊, 外国人!" (āh, waiguórén! Oh! Foreigners!) In response, I said "对, 我们是外国人. 什么事?" (duì, wǒmén shì waiguórén. Shenme shì? Yes, we're foreigners. So what?) At this, the child gaped at me for a moment, and then ran off, calling for his mother.
We parted ways with Kyle at our doors, then we climbed back up into our beds, read for a bit, and went to sleep.
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